Office Lens arrives to iOS and Android

Office Lens for iPhone and Android devices

About a year ago, Microsoft first introduced Office Lens for Windows Phone. The idea behind the app was to enable users to convert any smartphone into a pocket scanner. With Office Lens, users can take pictures of receipts, menus, business cards, whiteboards, sticky notes, and anything that contains important information on any surface and from any angle, then Office Lens will enhance, crop as necessary, and save the capture on OneNote.

The operation is just like if you were using a scanner, with difference that it conveniently save the image to any section you assign in OneNote, you can even convert the image into a Word document for easy editing and the app can also save the image as PDF file.

Office Lens - before and after
Before-and-after look at pictures of a receipt and a paper document captured and processed by Office Lens for iPhone.

Office Lens is a free application available at the Apple App Store and Microsoft is offering the following features in this release:

  • Auto crop, enhancement, and cleanup of the image.
  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR), so the text inside of the image can become searchable in OneDrive and OneNote.
  • Converts images of paper document and whiteboard notes into editable Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents.
  • Capture business cards and generate contacts.
  • Inserts images to OneNote or OneDrive as docx, pptx, jpg, or PDF format, and gives you the option to save, export, and share the image.

Alongside iOS app, Microsoft is releasing a preview of Office Lens for Android phones, which is similar to the iPhone version, but the apps have limited functionalities. Unlike Office Lens for iOS, you’ll need to become a beta tester before you can download the app.

1. Go to the Office Lens Google+ community and click Join community in the upper right-hand corner.

2. Under About this community, click the Become a Tester link and then follow instructions on the page.

3. Then wait 10-15 minutes, which is the time it takes to activate your beta tester account, go to this web page, and click the download link at the bottom.

If you’re a Windows Phone user, you can download the app from the Windows Phone Store.

Source Microsoft

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.